RSS feedPosts Tagged ‘Simon Broughton’
Simon Broughton on the Proper Music podcast
Posted on January 9th, 2012 in Songlines Blog by Alexandra Petropoulos.
Editor-in-chief Simon Broughton discusses Congolese rapper Baloji, Inner Mongolian throat singers Anda Union and Canadian-Indian artist Kiran Ahluwalia with DJ Jamie Renton and Telegraph world music critic Mark Hudson on the latest Propermusic podcast.
You can listen to the podcast on Soundcloud or iTunes and hear the panel discuss the artists’ latest releases – all recent Top of the World artists.
The panel also delves into the state of world music, which makes for very interesting listening. Let us know what you think.
If you liked what you heard of Baloji, be sure to see his London gig at the Barbican, supporting Orchestra Baobab, later this month.
World Routes: On the Road out Jan 16
Posted on January 5th, 2012 in Songlines Blog by Alexandra Petropoulos.
The album World Routes: On the Road, featured as a Top of the World album in the current issue #81, will be released on January 16.
The 2 disc compilation features previously unreleased material recorded on location by BBC Radio 3′s World Routes programme. Compiled by producer James Parkin and co-produced by presenter Lucy Durán, it features some fantastic tracks.
Editor-in-chief, Simon Broughton, reviewed the album in the current issue:
World Routes (currently broadcast on Sunday evenings) is BBC Radio 3’s flagship world music programme. And to my knowledge, there is nothing like it anywhere else in the world. The programme has over ten years travelled the world exploring and making top quality recordings of local music. The programmes could be more journalistic and less effusive, but they bring fantastic music to a wider audience at the press of a button. This CD, compiled by producer James Parkin and co-produced by the programme’s main presenter Lucy Durán, is a tenth anniversary celebration featuring recordings made specially for the programme.
There are some real gems here: Tito Paris in Cape Verde singing ‘Mar Azul’, the morna by B Leza made famous by Cesaria Evora; the fantastic pit-xylophone in the village of Nakibembe, Uganda; the Riho Ensemble in Svanetia, the mountainous province of Georgia; and Justin Vali and Paddy Bush playing valiha in Madagascar. There are exquisite tracks from oud player and World Routes Academy mentee Khyam Allami and his mentor Ilham Al Madfai, sounding softly reflective in his song about Baghdad and the wonderful South Indian singer and this year’s mentor Aruna Sairam, a real World Routes discovery.
Having strong memories of hearing fantastic recordings in Xinjiang and Algeria, I was a little disappointed not to find any of that here, but I understand that’s down to licensing problems. So better to enjoy what there is – which is plenty. I’d recommend starting with CD2 which kicks off thrillingly with Venezuelan harpist Carlos Orozco, quickly followed by other tasty morsels from Cape Verde, Georgia, Uganda and Madagascar. Then have a listen to CD1. Apart from Toumani Diabaté and Tito Paris, there aren’t many well-known names here and that is exactly the point. Often these are musicians who play for local audiences or are only just on the international radar – like the fabulous clarinettist from Epirus, Petroloukas Chalkias; Peruvian guitarist Manuelcha Prado, who includes Jimmy Page amongst his admirers; and the Azeri singer (raved about before in these pages) Gochaq Askarov.
The entertaining notes by producer James Parkin broaden the picture, but what this selection of 30 tracks certainly does is drive you to the programmes where you can get more of the context and atmosphere. Luckily they are all archived on the Radio 3 website.
You can listen to tracks from the album on SoundCloud.
The release will be celebrated with performances by Azerbaijan’s Gochaq Askarov and World Routes Academy protégé Hari Vrndavn Sivanesan at the Front Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall (free admission) on February 3. You can find the concert details here.
For more details on BBC Radio 3′s World Routes, please visit: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006tnmp
Songlines Podcast wins Caribbean Tourism Organisation Award
Posted on November 9th, 2011 in Songlines Blog by Alexandra Petropoulos.
We are very proud to announce that the Songlines Podcast was awarded the Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO) Award for Best Broadcast, TV and Radio feature for editor-in-chief Simon Broughton’s piece Drumming up the Dead.
The awards consisted of seven different categories – including Best Consumer Feature, Best National Newspaper Feature, Best Online Feature, Best Piece of Photojournalism, Best Regional Newspaper Feature, and Best Travel Feature – and were presented on the first day of London’s World Travel Market.
Broughton was there to receive the award and commented, “I’m delighted that our humble podcast won in the ‘Broadcast, TV and Radio’ category, but I think what struck people was the way it featured people on the island of Carriacou talking intimately and colourfully about their own deep musical traditions and their roots in Africa.”
David Gibb, the drum maker from Carriacou featured in the podcast
You can hear the feature, which was aired on our issue #71 (October 2010) podcast, through iTunes or RSS feed. The feature can be heard at 13’30” in the Songlines Podcast 71.
Simon Broughton, Songlines editor-in-chief, Mawazine Festival 2009 Report
Posted on May 26th, 2009 in World Music by Songlines.
As has been widely reported, the Mawazine festival in Rabat, the Moroccan capital, ended with a tragedy after the concert of Abdelaziz Stati at a football stadium. Eleven people died in a stampede when a metal fence collapsed. It’s a terrible tragedy for those who lost their lives and their families. The fact that the casualties included five women, four men and two children show that whole Moroccan families – and groups of young women and groups of men – love to go to these events and socialise.
Sadly, the tragedy casts a dark shadow over an event where thousands upon thousands of Moroccans – and visitors from overseas – had a fantastic time. I was at Mawazine when the accident occurred, but was unaware of it as I was just leaving the Stevie Wonder concert that had been happening simultaneously at another location.
By getting there early, we got a fantastic position in the centre just a few metres away from the front of the stage. There I enjoyed the full glory of hearing 70,000 Moroccans singing ‘I Just Called to Say I Love You’ and waving their arms from side to side. It felt a real privilege to see Stevie so close in such a wonderful location. Surely this is the acceptable face of globalisation.
As we left the concert I was actually rather impressed by the security barriers and precautions. It took a long time to get out, but there was little pushing and no crush. And throughout the festival, the organisation was impressive. Concerts started pretty much on time, the sound and lighting was good and the range of artists extraordinary. Most of the concerts are free. I was just there for the last four days of the nine-day festival, but it has a line-up unmatched by few festivals anywhere in the world. International artists included Kylie Minogue (no thanks), Sergio Mendes, Solomon Burke, Alicia Keys and Stevie Wonder; world music artists included Fanfare Ciocarlia, Amadou & Mariam, Khaled, Eliades Ochoa, Ska Cubano, Faiz Ali Faiz, Buika, Ojos de Brujo, Alim Qasimov and more. It was predictably the Moroccan performers that attracted some of the biggest crowds – the most extraordinary I saw was female chaabi singer Daoudia who played a violin Arabic style, propped on her knee, and sang songs, with a back-line of men on frame drums, that drove her audience into a frenzy. It was these Moroccan gigs that elicited the wildest reaction in the crowds too, and on the final night, Stati’s concert was relocated from the centre of town to the Hay Nahda football stadium because of the huge crowds he was expected to draw.
Despite the shadow of the tragedy, my overwhelming memory of Mawazine is of thousands of people enjoying music of every kind. I hope the investigation into what went wrong is conclusive and doesn’t dim Mawazine’s ambition to continue producing a world-class festival of astonishing quality.
If you’re interested in Moroccan music, there’s just time to get on board our Songlines Music Travel trip to the Essaouira Gnawa & World Music Festival departing on June 25 http://www.songlines.co.uk/musictravel/tours-festivals/morocco-essaouira.php
Simon Broughton
